Conversations on Faith and Culture

Heaven, Hell and the Afterlife

with Mike Fabarez

What have you wondered about when it comes to the afterlife? Sean and Scott interview Pastor Mike Faberez, pastor of Compass Bible Church in Aliso Viejo, Calif., about his new book 10 Mistakes People Make about Heaven, Hell and the Afterlife. Join us as we talk about some of those things you may have wondered about the afterlife.

Episode Transcript

Scott Rae: And I'm your cohost Scott Rae, dean of faculty and professor of Christian ethics, also at Talbot School of Theology at Biola University.

Sean McDowell: We're here today with Dr. Mike Fabarez, the pastor at Compass Bible Church in Aliso Viejo, Calif., a graduate of Moody Bible Institute, Westminster Theological Seminary and Talbot School of Theology. Author of multiple books, but today, we want to about his most recent book, 10 Mistakes People Make about Heaven, Hell and the Afterlife. Pastor Mike, thanks for joining us.

Mike Fabarez: Hey, it's great to be here, Sean and Scott.

Sean McDowell: Well, let me start off by asking you kind of a broader question, if that's okay, before we jump into the particulars of your book. You've been pastoring for three decades, and I'm curious: How have the questions changed that you get asked as a pastor? Or the issues you have to address through this period of time?

Mike Fabarez: Wow, that's a great question. Things have changed, certainly, last three decades. I think I got a lot of questions early on about the application and implication of biblical truth, and it seems that, through the decades, more and more the questions shifted to, what is truth and is it really true? There's always an increasing pressure, it seems, in our culture of late to conform God and the Bible to whatever we might like, so it's certainly gotten to the place where the questions I get seem to be focused more and more on the foundation. What is true? What is truth? Who is God? How do we know? It's not just what we believe, but a lot more now, why are we supposed to believe that?

Sean McDowell: That's really interesting. Would you say you get the same questions from both Christians and non-Christians? Or they're different kind of questions that they ask?

Mike Fabarez: Yeah, I mean, I certainly get a different flavor, a different feel. Non-Christians, it seems today more than ever, to be honest, are a lot more unfriendly, a lot more assertive, a lot more dismissive, I think, in the questions that they ask. And it may be germane to the kinds of questions I'm getting from Christians at the end of a sermon, or on the patio, or in the emails that I get from my own congregation. They're the same kinds of questions, but it's like someone insulting your wife. There's a sense in which you've got someone trying to say, well, I need to figure out why they would say that about her and why are they asking this about God? There's a lot of need, I think, from Christians today, for careful definitions. Cultural Christianity, as it's moved more toward self-centeredness that kind of have our people look at the Bible and say, why is it that the God of the Bible is the way he is, and how can I make sure I can discuss this God with my neighbors and my friends in a way that will help them to understand?

Mike Fabarez: So, I do a lot of call-in shows, and obviously get a lot of questions as a pastor from non-Christians, but I just find that a lot of the issues are the same. I think how those questions are asked are a lot different.

Scott Rae: Mike, let's turn to the questions that deal with your book on the afterlife, because theologians, I think, have often one approach to this that might differ a bit from philosophers. Not that you're neither a philosopher or a theologian, but primarily, in your role as a pastor, how do you uniquely approach questions of the afterlife?

Mike Fabarez: Well, I certainly see there is a difference. Not all the time, but a lot of the time. As I read a lot of things in leading up to writing this most recent book on the afterlife, I read of theologians and a lot of philosophers, but I know that when I'm dealing with these issues week in and week out, I'm dealing with them on a personal level.

Just in the last, I'd say seven days, I had two congregants that I really love and know well, pass away. They died and I've been there in their homes and at their side, and I'm talking to their loved ones, to their wife, to their children about the afterlife in a way that can't be detached, it can't be theoretical. It can't just be pie in the sky theological. It's practical, and for them, in their pain and in their difficulties, I'm holding the hand of a loved one who died, and now having to turn to a family that's grieving. They want to know, where did they go? Do they have bodies? When will we see them again? How do we know for sure this is true? I kind of see it as the difference between someone who's sorting mail at the post office, and the mail carrier who's standing there talking over the mailbox at the end of the driveway with people he loves and knows in his neighborhood. I appreciate the mail sorters, and the people that are hammering out the issues of theological, philosophical questions about the afterlife, but I feel like pastors are on the front line having to deal with the people who are there in the poignancy of losing a loved one, and we have to do with those situations.

And not just the loss of a loved one, but the people that are dying. I had a great conversation with both of these congregants just three days before each of them died, and talking about the afterlife. That's the kind of discussion, unfortunately, a lot of theologians don't get to have as often as the pastor, and I think it does shape kind of how we go about describing these things and how we even carefully present this truth to people, particularly when the news is not always good news.

Scott Rae: Yeah, I so appreciate the approach that you're taking being on the front lines of this and delivering the mail, so to speak, because I think in a lot of cases, pastors look to philosophers and theologians for the mail sorting that you described. But I think there's a lot to be said for pastors and folks like you who are on the front lines of this, actually setting the agenda for what philosophers and theologians ought to be thinking and writing about to help better serve those of you who are in the trenches in the local church.

Mike Fabarez: Well, absolutely. I do think you find that theologians and philosophers sometimes do their best work in the wake of their own personal pain, and they're taking their theology and putting it where the rubber meets the road in life. You've seen that from folks writing great works about the afterlife after the death of their family member or their child or their spouse, and those sometimes are the most riveting books to read, because you've got some very intelligent, insightful, well-read people addressing issues through that, kind of matrix of their own pain. Sometimes that's helpful, because that's where we live. We're human beings and we experience loss and we're dealing with death, and we hate it. The Bible says it's an enemy. So, to deal with this in a non-detached, non-theoretical way, to get out of the ivory tower and into the streets of the everyday life of loss and pain, and question about the unknown that so many people struggle with, we've got to do that. I think that's where some of our best work comes, whether we're pastors or theologians, it's where we have to think. We have to live in that application of truth, not just discovering what it is, but how does it work in real life?

Scott Rae: Let me pursue this a little bit further and deal with a scenario that I'm sure you deal with all the time, which is at the bedside, dealing with a patient who's at the end of a terminal illness. How does the notion that death is a conquered enemy, I think, is a very powerful one biblically, how does that help shape the conversations that you have with folks that you counsel with, families that you deal with, who are there in the middle of walking down that road of the end of life with a loved one?

Mike Fabarez: Well, I'm hoping certainly the people that I've just dealt with this last week, and of course comes down a long line of folks that unfortunately are facing terminal illnesses, if they're coming from my own congregation, I remind them, and it's not hard for them to connect the fact that, what we're doing every time we open the Bible, every time we study God's Word, we're dealing with things that are super cultural. They go beyond just our lives and our work, and it's not just the sermons about 10 steps to have a better relationship, or make your kids mind. It really comes down to heaven and hell, and God and truth and redemption and Christ. And I often, in both cases this last week, I held their hand, and I said, remember, everything that we gather to worship about, everything we talk about when we open the Word of God is all leading to this. This is the test of the reality of our theology. Is death conquered? Did Christ solve the problem? If the wages of sin is death, you're facing this body biological element of that death. Don't you know that everything we've been dealing with, everything we've been talking about, everything we've been celebrating and worshiping Christ for, is now at its point of testing. This is it. We have hope in death.

Herbert Lockyer wrote a book years ago, and he wrote a ton of them kind of listing all the things in the Bible. One of them was the last words of saints and sinners. And to kind of look at the way non-Christians die, and the way Christians die, it's night and day. I can't write my own book, I don't have as much experience, perhaps, as Lockyer, but I've certainly been by the bedside and held hands of people that are not saved, and to see the difference in people that don't have the connection to the big themes that I hope are what is in view, every time the Bible is exposited in their churches, that's when they start to recognize this is what it's all about. This is the hope we've been praying for. This is why the forgiveness of sins and Christ's redemption is central. It calms our conscience, it removes our sin, it gives us hope beyond the grave. It's rooted in a bodily, physical resurrection of Christ, and once you move away from those things, and church becomes a self-help, practical heehaw, then unfortunately, we're now trying to think theologically in our last moments of life.

So, I've found that bringing them back to everything that we've dealt with, theologically, the big themes of Scripture, which I hope are in the pulpits of more and more churches that care about Scripture, they make that connection. There's been a great peace in the people that I know that genuinely are trusting in Christ as they face those final hours.

Scott Rae: Yeah. That's really helpful, Mike. What I've found in my work in bioethics, I've spent a lot of time consulting for hospitals, and spend a lot of time at the bedside as well. Mine has been more with physicians and healthcare professionals as opposed to families, but I am struck by how frequently believing families and believing patients feel like they have to do everything possible to extend earthly life at all times and at all costs, and I remind them that, because death is a conquered enemy, death need not always be resisted.

Mike Fabarez: Right.

Scott Rae: And over time, families, I think I found this very freeing to realize that there are times, under the right conditions, where it's appropriate to say, "enough" to medicine.

Mike Fabarez: Absolutely, Scott.

Scott Rae: And to essentially entrust their loved one back to the Lord and remove and just allow death to take its natural course. Now, that's to be carefully done, and under the right conditions, but I think they've never really thought much about this idea of death being a conquered enemy and therefore, it's the therefore that matters, and therefore it need not always be resisted. I find that most of the patients that I've dealt with, they are much more afraid of lingering on in this terrible condition as opposed to allowing death to take its natural course and going home to be with the Lord.

Mike Fabarez: No, I agree. And I think, unfortunately, it reflects sometimes a deficiency, an anemic kind of theology that is all about being healthy and wealthy. If Christianity is used as a tool to simply increase my comfort and my bottom line financially, or my happiness, this then looks completely antithetical to that.

Mike Fabarez: But if we recognize this life is not what it's about, and you think of so many scriptures that remind us that, our citizenship is in Heaven. Our minds are set on things above. If that's the real fabric of the Christian hope, then people, I think, won't resist that death in the panic that non-Christians do. And you will begin to see that distinction. Frankly, I'm so proud of some of these recent saints that have died in my church that just have had that clarity about the fact that, this is a conquered enemy, and the sting of death is gone. We don't grieve as those who don't have hope, because we are counting on something in the future that has been settled in the historic past. That's what we have to have clearly taught in our pulpits, and we have to have those things clearly discussed and understood cogently in the small groups of our churches, so that we can look at death differently as a conquered enemy. That's critical. I agree fully, Scott.

Scott Rae: Here, here. I can't tell you how many times I've been around believing families when I've been tempted to ask, and I haven't, I've held my tongue thankfully. But I've been tempted to say, do you really believe this stuff about resurrection and eternity, and death being a conquered enemy? Because the way you're hanging onto earthly life like you are sort of betrays your theology on this.

Mike Fabarez: Absolutely. Yeah, for sure.

Sean McDowell: Hey Mike, I'm curious. Romans 12:15 talks about being happy with those who are happy, being sad with those who are sad. Sometimes our presence and just hurting with people is the right response, yet you're talking about how it is this biblical truth that death has been conquered, this life is only temporary, that sets people free. What advice do you have for people with their loved ones who are at that stage of dying, of just toeing that line between speaking biblical truth, but sometimes just being present with them?

Mike Fabarez: Yeah, well you know I am a speaker, a preacher. That's what I naturally engage in. But I'll tell you, if people watch me, and of course I bring my family or a pastor on our staff with me, they can testify to the fact that, Pastor Mike is working harder at being present, holding their hand, sitting there with them and discussing their loved ones they'll leave behind that we're going to care for. There's a lot more of the physical presence and the relationship of someone who cares for them that's with them, that they're not alone. That's much more, I think, at least the foundation that brings out, I think, the judicious and carefully-worded statements of truth. Truth is important, and I'm all about truth, but if they don't have a sense that you're walking through this with them, if they think you're just coming in to drop the truth bomb in the midst of their pain, then it'll come off as a platitude, or some kind of principle you're throwing out as opposed to, I feel your pain and I understand the difficulty of this. I don't think there's a time when you're dealing with someone in those terminal hours, those last few days, that unless you're cold-hearted, you don't walk in and experience this with them.

Mike Fabarez: I've been there at dinner, getting the phone call, someone's on the edge of death, and you take a deep breath and you have to pray. You have to transition into, okay, I'm not just walking into an assignment here. This is someone who's really hurting, and I've got to walk through this with them. I think it's 80% presence and maybe 20%, okay, remind them of things that you've been teaching them over the years that you know they believe, and bring their minds back to that. Because that truth does settle them, but it's the presence of people that love them that I think is the foundation for that truth.

Sean McDowell: Amen. Hey, in your book, 10 Mistakes People Make About Heaven, Hell, and the Afterlife, you really quickly move to establish the Bible as authoritative for answering questions about the afterlife. Not neuroscience, not philosophy, not someone's experience, but scripture. As you know, younger generations, say millennials and Gen Z, are increasingly skeptical of authorities outside of themselves. So, I'm curious, as a pastor, how do you help younger generations consider the Bible authority, especially when they've seen so many abuses of power?

Mike Fabarez: No, I hear you, and I believe that I understand the problem, and I get it, but one of the illustrations I weaved through an early chapter of the book is about the sinking of a ship. I try to remind people that there are certain things that are authoritative over us, and the ultimate theme of the book is, death is. No matter how much you don't like it, you don't want to submit to the authority of death, you're going to submit to the authority of death. As I like to say around here, the truth has hard edges. There's no getting around some things.

Mike Fabarez: I just happened to watch, funny I wrote this story and kind of imagined a sinking ship, but Monday, I watched a documentary on the sinking of the Costa Concordia, that Italian cruise liner, and lots of people died and it was terrible. A lot of people loved to stay in their cabins and they'd like to be in their casinos or having dinners, but the problem is, the laws of buoyancy were in effect, and gravity and physics, so if you wanted to save yourself, you had to disrupt your life, you had to recognize the only way out of this is to get to a life boat right now. Get to your room, get that life preserver on, and you have to submit to this whether you like it or not. Facts don't yield to our feelings.

Mike Fabarez: And I understand that our new, upcoming generation, they love their feelings, they love to be guided by their feelings, and it's all about how I feel and what I think, and it's about me. But we're not the authority, and my feelings aren't the authority. Facts are never going to be shaped by what I feel. There are certain things in life, and I think this is why it's so good for us to take our kids, like I try to, to bedside situations where people are dying, and say, this is real life. There are things like this we have to consider, and getting a new game console or going to an amusement park is never going to erase the reality that there are things like death you have to prepare for. We have to figure this out, we have to logically, cogently understand why it's here, we have to see that everything that Christ has come to do has reversed the penalty of this thing called death.

Mike Fabarez: So, I get it. I understand it. I'd like to shape reality to my own self as well, but I can't. Gravity, physics, buoyancy, the truth has hard edges and we just have to come to reality. You can't give a participation trophy for everybody in life just because they've been here. That's the culture, unfortunately, we've continued to kind of put forth in this new generation. I'm not bashing them. I get it. I feel, I empathize with it all. I'd like the world to be the way many people are positing it to be, but when you get down to it, I can't stop the aging process, I can't stop the cancer process, I can't stop the death process. We have to realize, when it comes to certain things that God has set forth in His spiritual realm, like the wages of sin is death, and there is a lawgiver and judge, these things I can't get away from. Kids in a classroom would love to not have that teacher up there.

Mike Fabarez: I think of when I was a kid, here's one: Long-term effect of laying out in the sun. Back in our day, when I was growing up in SoCal here, sunny SoCal, my wife and I grew up in Long Beach, and no one was putting on sunscreen, right? Only the nerd would bring sunscreen to the beach. Everyone's just getting burnt and toasted, and the girls are putting on their oils and their bronzing creams and all the ... It was ridiculous. We had to recognize, and I think today's millennials recognize, if you don't want skin cancer, there's a long-term effect. You sow to laying out and baking yourself every afternoon in the summer, you're going to reap from that. You have to realize, I may want to lay in the sun every day, but there are certain rules I can't ignore. That's the reality of authority. There is a God. He has created the rules, we're accountable to Him, and we've just got to settle into those hard facts.

Sean McDowell: As a parent of a couple Gen Z-ers and someone who speaks to Gen Z-ers a ton, I think your approach is just great and helpful, so thanks for responding the way that you did.

Sean McDowell: Let's move specifically to some of the chapters in your book. You take some of the popular misconceptions people have about the afterlife and you give responses to them. We'll just throw this out there to you and let you kind of take a few of the more popular ones. One of the early ones you say is that all roads lead to Heaven. What would you say?

Mike Fabarez: Yeah, well, everyone wants to say all roads lead to Heaven, because why would we want to be so narrow-minded and exclusive? But it's like that sinking ship analogy that I just recommended that we think about. There's a lifeboat. That's the way off. I can't hold onto my view that there ought to be a helicopter on the deck, and why isn't there a submarine to get me off? There's a lifeboat. That's the solution. The good news is that God has provided a solution to the problem of death and the wages of sin. Unfortunately, people are sitting there turning their nose up at it because they think, I don't want it, it's too exclusive. And there's a lot of people that will drown in a sinking ship if they're saying, I don't want to get to the lifeboat because I wish there were a helicopter or a submarine to get me off. Jesus came to solve the problem. He's the only one Who can speak authoritatively about the problem and the solution, because He proved it. No other guru has done that, no other religious philosophy has done that. The exclusivity of Christ is another one of those truths that has the hard edge that we've just got to accept, and in a panic, we will accept it.

Mike Fabarez: I illustrate things like, if I want to go scuba diving, I'm not going to fill my tank with gummy bears, or I'm not going to fill it full of helium. I need oxygen. If that's how I'm going to survive my dive today, I've got to have oxygen tanks. That's just the reality.

Mike Fabarez: And again, that gets back to the reality that facts are not going to yield for my preferences or my feelings, so if Christ came and provided the solution, we ought to rejoice. We ought to throw our hats in the air and say, there is a solution. That's the good news. Now we have to analyze it, make sure it's truthful, make sure it holds water and it makes sense, which I think it does. But we're stuck with that. There is a way, and God has provided it, He's revealed it. Speaking of the sinking ship, He's constantly putting out on the PA system on the ship, get to the lifeboats, get to ... Our conscience says it, the preaching says it, Creation itself is leading us to the decks, and unfortunately, we say, well, I'd like more choice. And that's great. I sympathize with it. I'd like a lot of choices, too, but when it comes to it, there's one way for me to get my sin problem dealt with.

Scott Rae: Mike, let me move to another, I think, misconception about eternity and Heaven. We often tell people that there's just as much hope for your body as there is for your soul in the scripture, but I find most people don't believe that. That they don't believe that there's a physical, there's a bodily part to our own resurrection when we meet the Lord. Why is that important that we-

Mike Fabarez: Yeah, well, I don't know how I can have hope as a human being that was created to be meshed and encased in this physical, tactile thing I have as a body, if somehow I'm supposed to imagine myself as Casper the Friendly Ghost, I'm a person who is designed by God to be embodied. So, of course the scripture makes this clear, it's just we've let popular culture and television sitcoms, or whatever we are, influence our minds to think that we're going to be some kind of translucent, see-through spirit, but the Bible is clear on this. I just used a chapter to kind of summarize and carefully take that biblical data to present that hope. I don't know how we can have much of a hope. It's like a turtle hoping to be, I don't know, a motorcycle. It doesn't make any sense for us to imagine something that God has made us to be without being specific that there's a correlation.

Mike Fabarez: Now, Randy Alcorn, of course, wrote a whole book, and much of it is about that physical, tactile reality. He wrote hundreds of pages on the topic, and certainly, I read that, and it's great material. All I'm doing is synthesizing that when I find so many Christians that still don't know that we're going to live in a real place eating real food like the resurrected Christ Who had real taste buds, He had real teeth, He had an esophagus, He had a digestive tract, and He sat there with unglorified disciples eating in a glorified body. I Corinthians 15 says that is my hope. That's the archetypal experience that I'm supposed to look to to know what I'm to expect, and what I'm expecting is exactly what the Bible says, and that's a lot of feasting, a real reality, we're going to hug each other, we're going to have hair follicles in the top of our head, we're going to have nostrils, we're going to have earlobes. That's the reality. It's a resurrected body, of course. It's not subject to deterioration, it's impervious to disease and decay, but that's the picture in the Bible.

Mike Fabarez: I think the more we think about that and read that biblical data honestly, the more excited we become. If you don't see it that way, I don't know how excited you could be about being a ghost.

Scott Rae: So, I can be sure that my bum shoulder's going to be fixed when I meet the Lord?

Mike Fabarez: You can be sure of that, Scott. 100% sure of that. That's right.

Mike Fabarez: You might, but everyone else will have it back too, so it's going to be a tough game.

Scott Rae: Yeah. Sean might actually turn into a shooter in Heaven.

Sean McDowell: Any time you want to have a competition, Scott, I'm game.

Scott Rae: Let me ask you another question on this, Mike. I was with a fairly prominent theologian, who I greatly respect, some time ago, and he made the claim that ... One of the people around the table with us has a child who has a fairly severe form of Down syndrome, and he claimed that when we meet the Lord, we will still have our physical infirmities like we do. In fact, he looked at my friend and said, "Your son will still have Down syndrome when he meets the Lord, because if he didn't, he would be a different person." I found that a really odd claim. What would you make of that?

Mike Fabarez: Right. Well, I think people make that claim, oftentimes, from one simple statement where Thomas is there and Jesus is before him and he shows him the scars. I recognize that as an exception. I think that, even as it says in the book of Revelation, this Lamb as though He'd been slain, there's a picture of a remembrance of Christ's atoning work of suffering on our behalf, so I don't think I can take that one reference of the uniqueness of Christ showing scars and saying, well, my daughter who has spina bifida, she's paralyzed from the knees down, she can't walk, she has no calf muscles, they're all atrophied, I don't ever believe, nor have I told her, hey, you know what? Get used to those leg braces because you're going to have those in eternity. I think the DNA, the prescription of what God has without all of its problems, without any of its degeneration, without any of its disease, is going to be restructured. The way I like to put it around here is, God's going to remanufacture our body back to the manufacture specs. Back to what it should have been.

Mike Fabarez: So, yeah, there may be some problems recognizing people here and there. I hope that. There's some folks that have a lot of physical ailments that affect their appearance, and people that are bald, I think, are going to have every follicle on their head working properly, but I think we'll get around that quickly. I think my daughter is going to be able to skip and jump and run. She's not going to be a paraplegic anymore. I think Joni Eareckson Tada is going to be running through the reality of the new earth.

Mike Fabarez: So, I don't follow that, but I understand where it comes from, and I've heard people use that one passage to kind of come up with lots of theories about taking our ailments with us into the Kingdom, but I don't buy that at all.

Sean McDowell: Mike, I was having a conversation with an atheist friend recently, and he said, "Gosh, how would I not get bored in Heaven? There's no emotional risk, there's no physical risk, there's no sin." He goes, "I'd rather go to Hell." Now, obviously he doesn't understand the horror of Hell, but he's raising a fair question of, how are we not going to get bored in Heaven? What would you say?

Mike Fabarez: Right. Well, let me start at the end of that. I'd rather be in Hell. Of course, everyone pictures a part with all these degenerate friends. Jesus spoke of it as outer darkness. Complete loneliness, isolation. There'll be no parties in Hell, there'll be no beer in Hell, there'll be no light in Hell. The reality being away from the presence of the Lord and the glory of His power. God takes all of His gifts with Him. There's a passive element to God's judgment, and we can't sit there and give anyone hope that you're going to be with a lot cooler crowd. As the new atheists like to say, "Hey, if there is a Hell, you're going to be in good company." Well, you're not going to be in any company at all.

Mike Fabarez: But what I would say to people, because they're going to think, well, I'd rather be there and be eternally there, because the jokes will be better and we'll have more fun and we'll party together. Well, here's the reality, I've heard people say, and it's foolish, like when a 92-year-old person dies in our church, like if people don't know her very well, say, "Oh, well, she lived a good life," like everyone who loved her and cared about her was ready for her to leave. It's like I sat there at the bedside of my own 92-year-old grandmother, my wife's grandmother, and no one wanted to have her go. It's not like, well, won't we be bored if we have her for another 90 years? No, we love life, we love her. We don't like her pain and we don't like her disease, and we'd like her to be here without all that, but no one goes, well, she's put in enough years here, let's be done with her. I think every day we get up and we're ready to face a new day, the problems we have are the problems that are created and caused by sin.

Mike Fabarez: So, here's the reality, we're going to have a great opportunity. I think there'll be plenty of challenges, there'll be ministry to be done, opportunities that will present us with lots to exercise our creativity, our dominion in the New Earth that is going to keep us occupied, joyfully occupied, for eternity. And certainly, Hell is not going to be an option that anyone is going to enjoy. So, that's just a foolish comment, and I don't think anyone, near the end of their lives, the only thing that would make them want to be done with this life is the pain of this life, and that's the thing that's gone. If a 92-year-old was healthy and active, and everything was great and cogent and thoughtful and clear-minded, we're not going to go, you've had enough years here on the earth. Let's be done with you. No, we're just good another day. Let's take another trip. Let's take another adventure. Let's solve another problem. Let's create another thing. Let's put a website up. Let's do something cool. That's what people are doing and thinking.

Mike Fabarez: That's a straw man that's held up about Heaven. It's going to be this boring place. That's absurd. I don't think anyone really has that view when it comes to their loved ones, or even their own lives when they get old. The only thing they dislike are the things that are going to be gone in the New Jerusalem.

Sean McDowell: Pastor Mike, thanks so much for coming on. I have a ton more questions for you, such as, can we enjoy Heaven knowing our loved ones are in Hell? Can we sin in Heaven? I know our audience is thinking about these questions as well. But that gives me a good excuse to suggest they pick up your book, 10 Mistakes People Make About Heaven, Hell, and the Afterlife.

Sean McDowell: Mike, thanks for your clarity theologically, but also pastorally, and thanks for coming on.

Sean McDowell: This has been an episode of the podcast Think Biblically: Conversations on Faith and Culture. To learn more about us and today's guest, Pastor Mike Fabarez, and to find more episodes, go to biola.edu/thinkbiblically. That's biola.edu/thinkbiblically. If you enjoyed today's conversation, give us a rating on your podcast app and share it with a friend. Thanks for listening, and remember, think biblically about everything.

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Scott Rae is professor of Christian ethics and dean of the faculty at Talbot School of Theology. A noted Christian scholar and ethicist, Scott is the author of such books as Moral Choices: An Introduction to Ethics; Business for the Common Good; and Beyond Integrity: A Judeo-Christian Approach to Business Ethics. He has a Ph.D. and M.A. in social ethics from the University of Southern California, a Th.M. in Old Testament from Dallas Theological Seminary, and a B.A.S. in economics from Southern Methodist University. He has served in a variety of teaching and leadership roles, including a term as president of the Evangelical Theological Society in 2015.

Sean McDowell is an associate professor of Christian apologetics at Talbot School of Theology. A prolific educator, speaker and author, Sean has written and edited numerous books — including The Fate of the Apostles; A New Kind of Apologist; and Is God Just a Human Invention? — and has co-authored many others with his father, Josh McDowell, including More Than A Carpenter and Evidence that Demands a Verdict. He has a Ph.D. in apologetics and worldview studies from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and master's degrees in theology and philosophy from Talbot. In addition to his speaking at camps, churches, schools, universities and conferences, Sean also blogs regularly at seanmcdowell.org.